Baratunde Thurston
Keynote Speaker for Daemen's 75th Anniversary
Daemen University's 75th Anniversary Keynote Speaker, Baratunde Thurston is an American writer, standup comedian, and commentator. Thurston is the co-founder of Jack and Jill Politics, a black political blog whose 2008 Democratic National Convention coverage was archived in the Library of Congress. He has contributed to HuffPost and the Weekly Dig and is a semi-regular on the podcast This Week in Tech. He also was director of digital for The Onion.
In 2006, Thurston emceed the YearlyKos convention. In 2015, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah named Thurston supervising producer. In 2020, he announced his podcast, We're Having A Moment. In 2022 he began hosting a travelogue series on PBS called America Outdoors. Currently Baratunde serves on the boards of Build.org and the Brooklyn Public Library. He lives in Los Angeles, California.